She told herself that she would be okay (she was the chain-smoking, sarcastic, tough girl. If she wasn't okay, who would be?) People were betrayed all the time by people they thought they loved. They got back up on their feet, moved on, went on with their lives. She could do it too (though she didn't have much of a life anymore, considering she was dead) She flicked ash off the end of her cigarette and walked out of her room, so deep in thought she didn't notice the innocent-looking boy she had thought she was in love with curl into himself in the shadows of her closet, tucking his head into his knees, as if he wanted to hide his pain from the world.
Eternity is a long time. Days, hours, minutes, seconds, they all warped into something formless. The same house, the same four walls, they crowded her, and she felt suffocated by her inability to change her situation, to do different things. She walked the halls of the Murder House like a ghost (oh, the irony) aimless, and terrified that she would be stuck in limbo forever, with no chance of escape. Her parents were alright. They occupied themselves with the baby (not so much a baby anymore; she wasn't sure, but he was probably five now) Moira had a garden behind the house, plants growing all over her grave ( constance, darling, you should have known, beauty will always find its way out) Chad and Patrick constantly argued over the television (how the hell did they still have cable?) She assumed that the older ghosts were used to being stuck in the house, and it would be quite a while till they turned stir-crazy too. But she was a heart-broken, dead teenager. She wanted a real chance to move on, she wanted to get out of the house, either alive, or truly dead. She deserved that much, didn't she? Maybe she wasn't the nicest person to be around, she was prickly and snarky, but although she may have been black on the outside, she had a good heart. Unlike Tate. The devil really did look like an angel. How was she supposed to get on with her life (her death?) if the person she wanted to move on from was always a few rooms away. She avoided him as much as she could, but she could never truly escape him. He was everywhere: a flash of blond hair as she turned a corner, a ratty, familiar t-shirt (god, she had taken it off of him before) on the floor, his sweet, angsty (evil, lying) voice as he spoke to Hayden. Sometimes, when she was too overwhelmed (was she doomed to have the emotional range of a teenager forever?) she would cut herself, and die again. But she was never granted that sweet escape she craved, it could be a few days or a couple of months, but she would always wake up in her bed, her comforter tucked tightly around her, hands cold, heart colder.
Her mother asked her if she would consider talking to him again. She wondered how her mom, her MOM, who he had raped, could even ask her that. She told her a story: there was once a servant who owed his king a great deal of money. The king decided to let go of the debt, and the servant was free to go. However, a fellow servant owed the first servant a small amount of money. The first servant threatened his friend, and demanded he be repaid. When the king heard this, he was upset, and threw the first servant in prison. Her mom looked at her, eyes crinkled at the corners, and told her that people (even dead ones) have to have mercy and forgive. She turned her head. She couldn't forgive him. She was stuck here because of him. Her whole family was stuck here. He had brought an evil creature into this world, even if it was unintentional. Her shoulders shook, and her body shuddered. Because despite her hatred and distrust for him, she was pretty sure she still loved him, and that she would forgive him, if given the chance. She felt a comforting weight on her shoulders, and for a few seconds her mother's presence was enough to chase away her dark clouds.
It would be pretty pointless if she spent all her time doing nothing. She managed to throw off some of her funk, and started drawing. At first it was just the rooms of the house she loved and hated so much. The first few drawings weren't that great. She had some raw talent, but her perspective seemed off. The angles of the house were all wrong, corners meeting at odd places, walls smearing into each other. She was frustrated, but when you have all the time in the world, you don't give up. So, it was on a dark, dank day, when she was trying to draw the room Larry's wife set on fire, he entered. They were in the same space, for what seemed like the first time since she had told him to stay away. Her chest tightened – with fear, love, longing, disgust – but she refused to look at him, choosing to concentrate on her drawing instead. When she was satisfied, she crept out of the room, stealing a glance at him before she left, to find him looking at her with that sleepy, sweet ( no, no, it's not real!) smile that he used just for her. That night, when she took out her sketch pad, she found that her drawing had every line perfect.
He took to sitting in the room she was drawing in every day. He never said anything, neither did she. And after that first day, they never looked at each other. Her sketches got better every day. She tacked them all over her bedroom walls. After exhausting most of the rooms, she decided to start drawing the ghosts. She started with her mom. She drew the soft laugh lines around her mouth, the sparkle in her eyes (even death couldn't stop them from shining like sapphires), her soft, full figure, lying in the plush couch. After adding all the details, she couldn't help but add two lines : her smile is what makes eternity shorter, and her love is what makes me wish it would last longer.
And so she added a little poetry to every painting. She drew her father (you may not be sure of what you desire, but you know what you need, and that's enough). She drew Moira's two forms (she was beautiful outside, and now she's beautiful inside) She drew Chad and Patrick, entwined with each other like baby snakes (you hate me, you love me, baby, maybe it's a roller-coaster, but at least it's ours) She drew Nora( cry for me, need me, hope for me, I'll call you a fool) She even drew Hayden (bitch)
She knew she was putting off his portrait. She didn't want to do it, but her collection wouldn't be complete if she didn't. He didn't need to sit for her, she decided. She would draw him from memory. The paper lay blank in front her for a few minutes, before her hand began to move of its own accord. A face formed on the page, shadowed and haunted. There almost seemed to be a superimposition of a skeleton on his face. His grin looked feral, mad. His shoulders were hunched in a predatory manner. She covered the paper with her hands, tears forming in her eyes. Quickly, she flipped the paper over, and began drawing again. This time she drew the Tate she fell in love with. Boyish smile, melancholy eyes, appealingly unkempt hair, a tilt to his head, a look of pure adoration on his face. Then she quickly wrote: you're beautiful, but you're a beautiful disaster. you're a monster, but you're a sweet one. you said you loved me, but you betrayed me. you said we shouldn't hurt the ones we love, so why did you hurt me? i was a bird in your hands, my heartbeat a fluttering you could crush anytime. you crushed me. so why do I still feel fluttering whenever you come around? I love you. She scratched out the last line hastily.
Staring down at the picture, she realized no one could ever see it. But she didn't want to throw it away. So, she tacked the picture skeleton side up.
Most of the time she was confused. She didn't want to think about him, but excess time gave her no choice. He was evil. He was a murderer, a rapist, a psychopath. But he loved her. She knew it was true. It was dangerous to love the devil, but sometimes her heart ached that she couldn't put her arms around him.
So she started out small. She said hello to him in the garden. He looked around quickly, disbelieving that she would even say one word to him. By the time he realized it was him she was speaking to, she had turned away. She was the only one who missed the smile that erased the shadows from his face.
The next week, she knocked on his door with a Scrabble board in hand. She didn't look at him once while they played, but their fingers tangled more than once in their haste to get the best letters first.
On a quiet Saturday evening, she entered her parents' bedroom, and locked the door. She crawled into bed beside her mother, and asked her how she could possibly forgive him. He was broken, she told her. He was weak. He let his circumstances define him, instead of rising above them. He made the wrong decisions because he was not strong enough to make the right ones. And then, it became a habit for him, he never needed to think before making a choice. He may have been a psychopath, but he had never known real love till her. Most people rise up from the ashes that their life may make of them, but he wasn't one of them. He was still wallowing around in the ashes. And if anyone could pull him out of the ashes, they owed it to the people he had killed, the lives he had ruined, to try. Even the devil deserved a chance at redemption. Sometimes they just needed a hand to hold on to, she concluded, kissing her on the forehead.
That was why when she saw him alone in the living room, staring outside the window, she slipped her hand into his and squeezed. They watched the world go by, hand-in-hand for the rest of the night. In the evening, when she was going under the covers, she noticed him hanging around her door with an apprehensive look on his face. She hesitated before lifting her comforter as an invitation. He crawled in, and held on to her waist as if she would drift away from him. She stiffened for a minute before giving in. Even if he was unnatural, his arms around her felt like the most natural thing in the world.
They didn't speak much, and they didn't kiss at all. But she touched him to reassure him that she was there, and he clung to her like a drowning man. Sometimes they read the newspaper together, and he tried to make her laugh. But mostly they spent their time doing their own separate activities together. She would draw and he would watch YouTube videos, with their backs against each other. What she hadn't realized is that sometimes people who have done the worst things in the world without regrets are capable of feeling remorse. Sometimes it takes another person to bring out those feelings. And at the end of the day, they were two lost souls, trapped in an unending maze of time. Together, maybe they could be alright.
She awoke one night to find her bed empty. Swallowing down the sudden emptiness that crawled up her throat at his absence, she rolled over, trying to sleep again. Her sleep was fitful, and she woke up when she felt a dip in the bed. Frantic hands grabbed her face, and tilted it upwards. His face was streaked with tears, and in his hand was the drawing and the poem she had written him long ago.
"Why didn't you tell me? Do you.. do you still love me?"
She traced his cheekbones, and smiled wanly at him. "I don't know. But I don't hate you."
He started sobbing uncontrollably then. She took him in her arms and held him till the sun rose.
It was lonely today. He was nowhere to be found. She tried to ignore the nagging suspicion that he was up to no good. At the end of the day, she found him sitting on her bed with a wavering smile directed at her.
"I know we haven't talked about it. But I hope you know that I love you. I never stopped loving you. When I'm with you, the darkness fades. You're all I have. But I have to let you go. Because I didn't know anything about loving people before you, but I guess the thing about loving people is that you have to give things up. Sometimes you have to give them up."
She had no idea what he was trying to say. It made no sense.
"I know what you want, what you dream of. I found these"
He held out a sheaf of loosely bundled papers. She thought she had hidden them so well. They were all pictures of her, buried, or in an imaginary heaven, or even just out of the house. He knew now. He knew how much she craved release from this purgatory.
"They say… they say that sometimes the devil is capable of sending fallen angels back where they belong. You're an angel, Vi, and you fell by accident. And I'll send you back."
He cut himself with a razor blade, and then traced a star in his blood on her forehead, mumbling incoherently all the while. Then he moved his forehead so it was touching hers.
"I need to know. I know it's wrong and selfish of me to ask, but I can't just let you go. Do you want to leave? Forever? You'll never come back. And Vi, if I ever escape this place, I'm not going where you are. We'll never…never see each other again."
She's not sure. His tears are spilling onto her face, dripping down her nose. She realizes, with some surprise, that some of the tears are hers. He has to let her go. This is a pain he deserves, she thinks. Because he loves her with the whole of his black heart, and she loves him too, but she can't be here forever. But she won't leave him with an open, festering wound. If she does, he may never blot out his darkness. So she kisses him, pouring all her feelings into that one kiss, and then she tells him that she loves him. She tells him to never forget that. She tells him that even he is capable of regret and remorse and forgiveness. And then she tells him that she's ready to go.
He traces his blood across her arms and neck, criss-crosses in strange patterns.
Then he slits her neck.
She spirals into paradise, and he crouches over her body in pain, looking like an angel, even in death.